Ice Prints 1

Ice Prints 2

A small ice-fishing village in one of Canada's most alluring landscapes is the focus of Ice Prints, a photographic exhibition by Canadian artist Helen Verbanz.

Helen has travelled to the same village on Lac Des Deux Montagnes (Lake of the Two Mountains), situated next to Montréal, every February for the last ten years. Ice-fishing is an age-old tradition. People wait for the lake to freeze to a depth solid enough to withstand the huts, and return each year to fish and meditate in this still, quiet landscape.

Helen says the lake has a sense of immediacy to it. The small community of fishing huts surrounded by the haunting expanse of snow and ice is short-lived.

"My photographs play on the tension between water and ice, nature and culture, and the notion of change. This community gathers on the ice every winter, knowing their tradition is temporary because of spring and more recently, because of environmental change."

Helen takes photographs lying on her stomach on the ice. Her images portray the dominance the snow-scape has over the huts that are dotted across the frozen lake and over the surreal urban-scape in the background.

The neighbouring city that creeps into the horizon line of some of these images is a chilling reminder of the growth of city's populations, and of their effects on environmental change.

Helen's images suggest that this fishing village is a 'landscape under siege by global warming'.

Paradoxically Helen's portrayal of this landscape is strong and enduring, even though this icy tradition is short lived - dictated by seasons and by climate change.